“She has. The worst of it is that no one could call her a flirt.”
“I suppose not. But what do you call a girl who is attractive to all men, and who makes all the men grumpy, except the one she is talking to?”
“I call her a—a clever girl,” replied Lady Innisfail. “Don’t we all aim at that sort of thing?”
“Perhaps we did—once,” said Mrs. Burgoyne, who was a year or two younger than her hostess. “I should hope that our aims are different now. We are too old, are we not?—you and I—for any man to insult us by making love to us.”
“A woman is never too old to be insulted, thank God,” said Lady Innisfail; and Mrs. Burgoyne’s laugh was not the laugh of a matron who is shocked.
“All the same,” added Lady Innisfail, “our pleasant party threatens to become a fiasco, simply because I was over-anxious to annex a new face. I had set my heart upon bringing Harold Wynne and Helen Craven together; but now they have become hopelessly good friends.”
“She is very kind to him.”
“Yes, that’s the worst of it; she is kind and he is indifferent—he treats her as if she were his favourite sister.”
“Are matters so bad as that?”
“Quite. But when the other girl is listening to what another man is saying to her, Harold Wynne’s face is a study. He is as clearly in love with the other girl as anything can be. That, old reprobate—his father—has his aims too—horrid old creature! Mr. Durdan has ceased to study the Irish question with a deep-sea cast of hooks in his hand: he spends some hours every morning devising plans for spending as many minutes by the side of Beatrice. I do believe that my dear husband would have fallen a victim too, if I did not keep dinning into his ears that Beatrice is the loveliest creature of our acquaintance. I lured him on to deny it, and now we quarrel about it every night.”